Scenarios for a Post-2020 European Climate Policy

The ENTRACTE research project is aiming to analyse the European climate policy portfolio with special emphasis on the role of its interactions. Its final goal is to provide a pragmatic guidance for policy makers to design effective, economically efficient and politically and legally feasible climate policy mixes.

In this background paper policy scenarios are presented to serve as a common working base for subsequent numerical model analysis. We shed light on the current state of EU’s climate policy up to 2020 and on the current debate about climate policy targets for the period post- 2020. Building on the scenarios used in the Impact Assessment of the Energy Roadmap 2050 (European Commission, 2011b) we derive three archetypal policy scenarios that differ in their focus on expansion of renewable energy sources in the power sector, improve the energy efficiency of the economy and the direct reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.